16 Things the School Holidays Have Taught Me

Now I don’t know as much about parenting as Pete Evans, but what I will tell you is that I’ve discovered parenting is a lot easier when I’m not around my kids.

As one might imagine, school holidays have made this dynamic incredibly difficult.
On the last day of my twins kindergarten term I’m almost certain I could actually hear the school holidays whispering “go f**k yourself” into my ear.

Bear in mind I have two 5 year olds on the cusp of starting their first year of school, and a 2 year old, so I am actually a complete n00b when it comes to the magical, mystical world of 56-hour-long days that is the summer holidays. But I am a stay at home mum, so I’m pretty used to having my kids around. That said, my twins had 15 hours a week of kindergarten last year, and since I’m very routine oriented, I had a pretty well laid out schedule of midday Netflix and highly important investigative googling on those days while my two year old had her lunch time sleep.

Cut to school holidays and I don’t know who I am or where I am. What day it is or when I last mopped the floor. Especially that last bit.

Needless to say, my initiation into 8 weeks of school holidays has taught me a few things.

1. I may not be cut out for this motherhood gig after all.
2. School teachers are grossly underpaid.
3. The moment of silence between shutting the back door of the car and opening the front door is a vortex of serenity where dreams really are a wish your heart makes.
4. There is no such thing as a stupid question, except “can you guys please put on your shoes”. No. The answer is no. They can not.
5. Whatever I say, the answer will always be “why”.
6. Suzy sheep is kind of a bitch.
7. I can always rely on one child to become the court appointed defence attorney for the other when times get really tough.
   
8. Dare to dream. One day each child will want the exact same thing for lunch. It will probably be something I don’t have. Or chips.
9. Children are statistically 2.6 decibels louder in the car than in any other confined space.
10. One can go quite a few days not having showered without ones husband noticing.
11. The lower your standards for domestic cleanliness, the better.
12. For a small human who struggles to wipe their own ass, a five year old’s ability to execute legally binding contractual agreements in regards to screen time is somewhat startling.
13. Despite how bad at maths I am, I am able to mentally calculate, to the minute, how long it is until my children’s bedtime at any given moment throughout the day. Bedtime = how long my kids have been fighting divided by the amount of patience I have left minus how many near breakdowns I’ve had + wine squared. Yeeeeep. It’s time to take off my algebra.
14. Jimmy Giggle has no idea what the f**k he’s talking about; there are actually 1, 2, 3, 4 5 hundred and 87 billion steps to bedtime. [Truth be told, I actually learnt this long ago. School holidays just rub salt into the already weeping and slightly emotionally compromised wound].
15. There are three levels of pain. Pain, excruicating pain and stepping on a Lego.
16. Taylor Swift has written albums less pissed off and emotionally spent than I am likely to be by 10:15am every day.

    

Now I don’t want to outrage the internets too much; I adore my children and absolutely love spending time with them, blah blah blah, insert examples here, etc etc. Fantastic mother. Hardly ever let them watch TV or eat snacks, wash their precious little faces using only the tears of unicorns, la la la.

And obviously I’m sad and somewhat nostalgic that in two weeks time, two out of three of my children [my first babies sob sob] will go off to their very first day of school…because then I’ll have to stay at home and do whatever I want. And that sounds awful. AWFUL.
And when I say whatever I want, I mean absolutely nothing I want because I’ll still have my two year old to look after.

So. ANYWAY. Over the next few weeks I have vowed to absorb all the moments I have with my twins while they’re still purely “mine” and before they get gobbled up by the education system. We’ll do crafts. We’ll go on learning adventures. We’ll make cakes out of all organic non-genetically modified ingredients. We’ll pick flowers from fields, we’ll follow leprechauns to find pots of gold at the end of rainbows, and frolick in the sunshine, having long lazy naps during the day but still going to bed on time. The ocean will kiss our toes each day as we laugh and laugh.

Sounds awesome doesn’t it?

I’m pretty sure the time will fly. We’re in the swing of the summer holidays now. No one will argue. No one will cry because I put Vegemite in their sandwich instead of peanut butter, or because I selfishly asked them to put their shoes on because I am an #assholeparent. I won’t hide in my walk in wardrobe and binge eat Nutella from the jar while checking Facebook on my phone, pretending to be on the toilet, and we won’t watch Peppa Pig even one time.
….
Only 12 days to go.
But I mean, who’s even counting?